I am the president of Metis Strategy, a CIO advisory firm that I founded in 2001. I have advised many of the best chief information officers at multi-billion dollar corporations in the United States and abroad. I've written for the Wall Street Journal, CIO Magazine, CIO Insight, Information Week and several other periodicals. I am also the author of Implementing World Class IT Strategy: How IT Can Drive Organizational Innovation (Wiley Press, September 2014) and of World Class IT: Why Businesses Succeed When IT Triumphs (Wiley Press, December 2009), a book on leading IT practices that has sold over 15,000 copies around the world. Since 2008, I have moderated a widely listened to podcast entitled “The Forum on World Class IT,” which features a wide array of IT thought-leaders, and is available at www.forumonworldclassit.com on a biweekly basis. I have been the keynote speaker at a host of corporate conferences and universities in the US, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Spain, China, India, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. You can reach me at peter.high [at] metisstrategy.com or on Twitter @WorldClassIT

Education Technology Is In Its Infancy But It Is Growing Up Fast

Much has been written of late about the need for healthcare reform in our country. Whether one is a fan of the Affordable Care Act or not, the case for change is quite clear. The fact that healthcare makes up such a high proportion of our gross domestic product (north of 17 percent), and has grown at such a fast clip relative to the consumer-price index (one and a half times) underscores the need for change. However, there is an industry the fundamentals of which have not dramatically changed in hundreds of years, and yet its costs have risen at a rate three times as fast as the consumer-price index. That field is education.

The classroom setting with a professor standing at the head of a class talking at a roomful of students is largely the same model that existed when the first universities were established in the United States. It is no wonder that some creative people have stepped forward with truly innovative ideas in the education space to attempt to turn the traditional model upside down.

The most prominent example of this is the massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Companies like Udacity, Coursera, and edX offer content from some of the world’s leading universities for free. Interestingly enough, each was founded by current or past academics from Stanford, Stanford, and MIT respectively. The inspiration for at least one of these was the Khan Academy, which famously began when Salman Khan began tutoring his young cousin in mathematics using YahooYahoo!’s Doodle notepad. When he uploaded his lessons to YouTube, hundreds of thousands of people began to learn from Khan’s teachings, convincing him that there was a broader opportunity to pursue. Some foreign MOOCs have been established, as well. A prominent example is the UK’s FutureLearn, led by former BBC executive Simon Nelson, which has drawn in content from many leading UK and Commonwealth of Nations universities.

The promise of the MOOCs is to provide access to leading content on a wide array of subjects, and to level the playing field to get a world class education. That education may not yet be accredited, though some of the companies are working on that. Through the use of technology, much more data is being collected on students than ever before, providing insights about which students need more assistance, which are candidates to move quickly through courses, and which require more explanations and extra lessons. They also provide forums for students to collaborate around the world. The average time to get a question answered by a fellow student taking a MOOC is order of magnitudes faster through the MOOC forums compared to the traditional settings.

There is clearly a threat to the traditional teaching model where a professor of 101 level class delivers the same lectures for decades, and leaves much of the grading and student interaction to teaching assistants. Courses that incorporate MOOCs into them now have the professor’s best lecture captured for the ages, and when students and professors gather together, there is an assumption of a base level of knowledge that is higher than in the past. It suggests that in the future, classroom time will be much more about collaboration and problem solving rather than lecturing alone.

The MOOCs themselves are largely in their infancy. Most of these companies are under two years old, and yet there is much that has been learned. For instance, each has drawn in a tremendous student body from around the world. Coursera has attracted 5.2 million students as of October 2013. Within mere months of launch, Udacity had students in 203 countries.

Some of these companies are partnering with corporations to develop training content for employees. This offers a window into non-traditional ways in which these education entrepreneurs are likely to grow.

On the other hand, it is not all good news. 90% people who sign up for a MOOC do not finish. Often times, the fact that the courses are free means that there is less of an incentive to take a course through to completion.

What does the future hold for these innovative companies, and how will it change the way in which our children and their children are educated? Will it serve to lower the costs of education? Will it create pressure on high cost private universities with less prestigious brands, as one can spend much less and learn from the top professors from Ivy Leagues schools?

To answer some of these questions, I spent time with CEOs of each of the companies mentioned above. I will publish the interviews weekly beginning with my interview with Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Udacity, published today. To read interviews with Salman Khan (CEO of Khan Academy), Daphne Koller (co-CEO of Coursera), Anant Agarwal (CEO of edX), and Simon Nelson (CEO of FutureLearn), please click the “Follow” link above.

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A large omission here is www.alison.com — the article speaks of a ‘level playing field’ provided by MOOCs but realistically, the only one mentioned in the body that is achieving that is Khan Academy. ALISON however which was founded several years before Coursera or edX is targeted directly at the vocational world and the underprivileged, to provide an educational solution where few others exist at zero cost to the student. With over 2 million registered and nearly 600 courses – it is a leading online education player and a founding source of the movement that the US media happily seems to omit.

Thank you for your thought provoking comment. You are right that ALISON is a great example that could have been included herein. As I am introducing a series that will include conversations with the CEOs of the companies mentioned, admittedly I did not include those companies whose CEOs will not be interviewed. I thought that the list that I put together was representative, though certainly not exhaustive.

Really excited about reading the interviews of big personalities in education sector. MOOC is going to change the traditional education way. Teacher- student interaction become more interesting. Rather than spending the time in lecture, student can directly come with their doubts in class. But with this responsibilities will also get increased for teachers, students for maintaining the security. For teachers, software like Faronics Insight will be really helpful to monitor the student activities. Students also need to take care while accessing the internet for research and other purpose.

Really excited about the upcoming interviews of great personalities in education sector. MOOC will going to change the traditional education. It helps in making teacher-students comunication more interesting. But with this, resposibilties of tearchers as well as students get increased to maintain the security. Software like Faronics Insight will really help teachers to monitor students activities. While reasearching for project work, students should take of accessing the sites which may steal their personal information.

“Level the playing field” initiatives extend also to the pre-college tutoring and prep space, engaging students with few resources to purchase expensive printed, personal or classroom aids to prepare not only for admissions tests (like SAT, SSAT), but also to bolster grades and performance in middle/high school – things like EOLlearning.com .

Nowhere is the promise of MOOCs more than in the developing world. The Khan Academy was a long distance attempt by Khan to tutor his family in a developing country and look where it is now. MOOCs have the potential to be the ultimate equalizers. I found the following blog to be quite good too: http://chopra-m.blogspot.com/2013/04/can-you-mooc.html

The comment about Intro profs using the same lecture notes for years – did you just make this up or are you referencing data on this supposed reality? The issue of MOOCS vs. campus courses needs to be resolved on real issues of quality and finances not stereotypes. The only data I can find in this article is that 90% of MOOC participants do not finish. If you are trying to make a case, I would hope you have more to offer than a 90% drop rate.

You may want to reconsider the headline you use. Education Technology is not inits infancy. Education has used mainstream technology – and in some cases leading edge tech – for centuries. In the 20th century, Ed Tech evolved as did consumer tech – from radio and TV to opaque projectors to slides projectors to smart boards.

MOOCs are trendy – but it’s unclear yet whether they truly are a trend. They do bring some ‘rock ‘em sock ‘em’ for profit business models to education with all the pros and cons that accompany them.

Technology i a tool and follows a progression of adoption like any other tool. To date, MOOCs and other trendy new models essentially use the communication side of ICT to broaden the audience for traditional instruction methods (e.g., recorded lectures).

So…yes MOOCs are a hot topic. But the logical conclusion of some of the data you quote is that there’s much more sizzle than steak to them.

if business really wants skilled 21st Century workers, perhaps they should resurrect in-house training rather than outsourcing them to others. Or, if that is not palatable, then perhaps they could partner with legitimate education institutions to develop meaningful metrics for outcomes of new learning models.